Senior sports reporter with The Age

A demonstrator in a Batman costume carries a sign with a photo of former soccer player Ronaldo at a protest against the upcoming World Cup in Rio de Janeiro. Photo: AP

Love the game, hate the administration and those who run it.

That, in a nutshell, is how the wider football world - those billions of supporters who follow, fund and emotionally engage with the game - feel about it.

The World Cup in Brazil should be a celebration of the game and all that is good about it.

A mural by Brazilian street artist Paulo Ito, of a crying child who is served a soccer ball to appease his hunger, covers a portion of a school wall in Sao Paulo, Brazil, as part of a protest against the World Cup. Photo: AP

It might have been ''invented'' in England, but it is the Brazil which has been its spiritual home for decades, the country which gave the game the name Jogo Bonito.

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And when the action really starts - when the host nation entertains Croatia in Sao Paolo on June 12 - it surely will be a celebration of the sort few other World Cups have engendered.

The heat and light and dust, the tropical zones up north and the cooler temperatures down south will make this a World Cup of contrasts, not just on the pitch but climactically.

The fervour of the Brazilian fans is well known, with every one seemingly having a view on the Selecao, who should be picked, who should be played where and what tactics the yellow and blues should employ.

This, after all, is a country which is televising every Brazil training session in the lead-up to that first game, interviewing players for lengthy periods afterwards and, it seems, even running panel shows to discuss the day's events.

But that is all to come. It is to the game's governing body's eternal shame that the lead-up to this, the greatest sporting show on earth, is so tarnished.

Ask most people what they think of FIFA and they will roll their eyes, clench their fists or simply shrug in disgust: Sepp Blatter and his Geneva-based cronies make Tony Abbot and Joe Hockey look like cleanskins as far as going back on promises is concerned.

If there is any muted feeling in Australia in the lead-up to this World Cup - mainly because of the low expectations of the team, which is in the toughest group of all - it might not be fanciful to also say that many Australians, not regular soccer watchers, have simply had a gutful of the corrupt organisation and the tarnished image it projects of the game.

Let's be honest - there are plenty of supporters (and administrators) of rival codes only to happy to kick the game when they can, and the latest sleazy revalations in Britain's Sunday Times of corruption and malfeasance on an industrial scale give them every chance.

The new evidence will be seized on as further ''proof'' that Australia was cheated out of its chance to host the 2022 event. Certainly, it was compromised by the dirty playing field it was competing on, but the reality was that Australia only got one vote for its $45 million taxpayer investment, and the US, Japan and South Korea all polled better in the race for positions behind Qatar.

Soccer doesn't help itself in markets like Australia when episodes like the Yaya Toure cake-spat get reported. According to the UK press the other week, Manchester City's influenial midfielder Toure - a man earning close to $500,000 a week - is talking about leaving the English champions because club officials forgot his birthday and didn't give him a cake to celebrate. Toure's monthly wage is close to the salary cap total for an A-League club with 23 players - the sort of statistic that doesn't play well with Australians not familiar with some of the wilder excesses of the world game!

The regular news footage of demonstrations and protests in major industrial centres in Brazil by citizens angry at government corruption and the huge investment being put into a tournament when myriad social problems need to be addressed, also colours the lead-up to this tournament. There is no guarantee that they won't continue right through the event.

Australian fans are right to travel more in hope than expectation where this World Cup is concerned. Ange Postecoglou is at the beginning of his journey to transform the national team and he goes into action with a callow squad full of many young, untested players. Whatever they achieve in Brazil, they will be a much better squad when Australia hosts the Asian Cup.

•Postecoglou's men play their first game in anger in the early hours of Tuesday morning (AEST) when they take on local team Clube Parana. Judging by the training session the day before the coach is likely to start his fringe players and those he is considering as borderline cases for the squad.